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I had problems sleeping as a teenager because I was stressed about schoolwork. I would wake up nauseous with no appetite because I was stressed about schoolwork, and poor sleep + bad nutrition meant I could never focus on my schoolwork, which made me more anxious... good times! https://t.co/wI8VzML0BY
In fact, I picked up cigarette smoking as a way of self-medicating my undiagnosed anxiety. Several of my friends tried it, but it didn't stick for everyone – it stuck for those of us for whom it was solving a real problem. People seldom seem to realize this about drug problems
I didn't "have a cigarette problem", I was using cigarettes to medicate my "visa/school mismatch" problem, which had catalysts including a "parental pressure" problem, "societal pressure" problem if I were diagnosed they'd just have put me on meds rather than address all of that
"are you seriously blaming society for your personal failings" yes the responsibility to fix it is mine but *I* didn't fuck me up, I was doing fine https://t.co/1sf9FyqjVl
When I was 13, I flunked out of the gifted education program in my country. I was told that my failure was a disappointment to the Indian community. On retrospect that was a really shitty thing to say to a child, and also very myopic, and selfish https://t.co/1k7HYBLDAx
about 10-30% of my energy, sometimes up to 95% (that's about 1% of the time, thankfully) is spent undoing the damage that school did to me. With each passing year this becomes more and more clearly true. I measure progress by the diminishing frequency of school-related nightmares
"school did damage to you? what are you some fucking snowflake" yes, in the sense that I got picked on 10x-100x more for being a highly-visible minority not whining about it; just saying it is what it is rare for people to really understand this https://t.co/IaJgfWE3Ay
Anyway. If your teenager is staring at a screen for troubling lengths of time, I bet there's probably something else going on other than just "the evil screen is seductive portal to hell". They might be trying to get away from something; that something might even be you. https://t.co/acKG64U5cc
Also,👇🏾 https://t.co/IwAEtsMbnl